somewhere in the back of her mind she thought she’d heard Tina mention that all the groomsmen were Darren’s Forest Service buddies.
“North Carolina Forest Service helicopter pilot. Based in Kinston. But Carly and I are here early making a vacation out of it.”
Kelly tamped down the reaction that still came with the word pilot. It wasn’t such a tidal wave anymore, mostly just a sharp surge, a “shiver of the soul,” as Pastor Mitchell put it. “Fire service?”
“Some,” he said. “Mostly support, transportation, supply, that sort of thing. But we do our fair share of fires. Sounds like you’ve got someone in the service?”
“No,” she replied. “My husband was a commercial pilot.” Was, not is. Did he notice her use of the past tense the way she’d noticed his? It always amazed her how such ordinary words held enough weight to grow a lump in her throat. “But he had friends in the service in Georgia,” she added, feeling the past tense of that sentence stick in her throat with the same weight.
The look in his eyes and the pause before his next question told her he had indeed noticed which tense she’d used. “Retired?” He said it with the low and careful tone of someone who knew there was another possible answer.
Kelly lowered her voice. “Fatal crash. Lightning strike. A few years ago.”
He looked down at the table and dragged the next words out in a low voice. “I’m sorry. We...um...we lost Carly’s mom Christmas before last. Cancer.”
Christmas without the one you love. Was there a bigger hole in the world than trying to survive a child’s mourning at Christmastime with your heart in splinters? “I’m so sorry.” Funny how they instinctively traded those words that never, ever felt like enough to contain the mountain of pain.
For a moment, neither of them spoke. They both sat up a bit as Marvin set a sizable sundae down next to the peach milkshake she’d brought over from the counter. “Enjoy,” Marvin said with his congenial smile. “Welcome to Matrimony Valley.”
“Thanks,” Bruce replied, looking up with an expertly applied smile Kelly knew all too well. The smile left as Marvin turned away, and for a moment or two Bruce swirled his spoon in the sundae’s whipped cream. “It’s hard,” he said softly, his voice catching a bit on the words. He nodded back in the direction of his daughter. “But I try, you know?”
“I do know. And then there are happy things like Darren and Tina’s wedding.” She hoped he caught the brightness in her voice. Weddings could be both lovely and excruciating from the viewpoint of a surviving spouse. Watching someone else’s heart find happiness always proved a mixed sort of joy.
“Weird, happy things,” he amended, a bit of a smile returning to his face. “Tell me you’ve got some idea for whatever it is I’m supposed to pick, because I sure don’t know. Couldn’t they have stuck me with just planning the bachelor night like a normal best man?”
“We’ll get you through this.” Kelly turned the tablet to face him. “Since the groomsmen are all wearing red plaid shirts and gray vests, I thought we’d go with pine and ferns.”
He clearly had no preferences. “Looks fine to me. Just nothing fussy.”
“Naturally. We’ll add a bit of red fabric to match your shirts and the women’s boleros.”
“Their whats?”
“Boleros,” she repeated. “The short jackets made from the same flannel as your shirts that the bridesmaids are wearing over their dresses.”
“Boleros, boutonnieres... Why can’t they just call them jackets and flowers? Come to think of it, why do the guys even need flowers anyway?”
So he was going to be one of those, was he? Someone who thought of flowers as expensive and frivolous incidentals, useless details that wilted days after the ceremony? “Every wedding should have beauty and traditions. Since the times of the Greeks and Romans, brides and grooms have worn flowers to symbolize hope and new life.”
“Fine, if you say so. I just don’t get why I’m stuck with choosing this. I mean, Carly could do a better job at this than I could.”
Grant me patience, Lord. “Well, then, let’s ask her. Carly, Lulu, come tell us what you think.”
They gushed over the images on the tablet, of course, because the designs Kelly had created for this event were unique, just like the wedding itself. Samantha Douglas would gush, too, if Kelly had her way. With the girls’ help, the boutonnieres were quickly selected.
“All that matters here is that Darren and Tina love the way the ceremony looks and feels,” Kelly explained, directing her words at Lulu and Carly since Bruce clearly couldn’t care less. “Every detail is a part of that, even the boutonnieres.” She turned off the tablet. “That’s how Matrimony Valley works. It’s why we do what we do.”
* * *
Bruce looked at the florist with a foggy sort of awe. How did this Kelly woman pull it off? Here he was, two years out from losing his wife, and he still couldn’t manage to feel like much more than the walking wounded. A man in some sort of invisible zombie state, lurching through life, looking alive but feeling half-dead and irreparably damaged every waking moment.
He did want to heal. The desire to come back to life still existed somewhere under the mountain of grief. He just didn’t know how to crawl his way out of this thing that only looked like living. The whole point of taking this time before Darren’s wedding was to find a way to snap himself out of this hamster wheel of busy emptiness.
But how? He wanted to be there, really be there for Carly, not just running through the parenting paces. He wanted to enjoy this wedding, to be happy for his friend and relish Carly’s role in it. Only, in lots of ways he could never admit, the whole thing just bugged him. It hurt. It reminded him of everything he no longer had. Made him so bristly that he took it out on innocent people like this florist, who was only trying to do her job well.
And just to make things worse, this woman seemed to sense the storm of thoughts that had pulled him away from the conversation. “Hey,” she said softly. “It gets better.”
He merely grunted in reply.
“Not right away,” Kelly went on, “and not nearly fast enough, but one day you wake up and you don’t feel quite so much like the walking wounded anymore.”
It was a shocking sort of comfort that she’d used the very same words that were in his head. “Yeah, everyone keeps saying that.”
“Because it’s true,” she replied. “But you do have to choose it, you know. Walk toward it. Crawl, if you have to.”
He ran a hand over his chin. “Not doing so good at that, actually.” He wasn’t so sure he liked how this woman he didn’t really know pulled such huge things out of him. She was prying open boxes. Private boxes he didn’t want to open for a very long time, if ever. She looked pushy, too, like the kind of woman who didn’t stop when she met resistance.
Kelly straightened, putting her tablet back into the tote bag with a matter-of-fact air. “So, what are your plans for while you’re here in the valley?”
“Oh,
